Designed by: Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance
Decrypto is a lateral-thinking, clue-solving game for two teams of at least two people (there’s also a variant for three players).
Teams sit either side of the table, and each side can view four randomly-chosen words that are hidden from the opposition, and numbered 1 to 4. In each round, one member of the team is the clue-giver: they (and only they) pick up a code card which gives them a series of three numbers, for instance 4-3-1. They now need to give clues to their team-mates that link to the words they can see, in this particular order. To continue our example if words 4, 3 and 1 are salt, handbag and race, you might clue pepper, leather and fast. Your team makes a note of their guess before you reveal whether they were right – which you want them to be – or wrong. And then the opposition do the same for their words.
The catch with Decrypto is that after the first round, teams can also guess the order of the other team’s code. So as well as keeping track of your own guesses and clues, you need to keep track of what the other clue-givers are giving away to their team. You don’t need to correctly identify what the words are, only the correct order of the code. This might seem impossible at round two, but as rounds continue more and more information is given away by the clues, and you have a greater chance of guessing correctly!
The game ends in one of two ways – either when a team guesses their own clue-giver’s code incorrectly a second time, or when they successfully intercept (ie guess right!) the other team’s code a second time!
We've had some wonderful games of Decrypto. The balance between decoding your opponents clues and coming up with clever ones for your team means your always involved and having to think laterally. It has an excellent arc too - in later rounds your clues will have to get more obscure, and it's extra satisfying when you manage to fox your opponents even though they felt they had you cornered. It's a tough game to explain, but easy enough to play a round, and then it all falls into place. Brilliant.
None.
There may be some short pauses - potentially longer as the game goes on - whilst the clue-givers try and think up a genius series of clues that make sense to their team-mates (who can see the words) whilst throwing opponents (who can't) off the scent.
It's a hard game to describe, but an easy one to play. After that first round the rules suddenly make sense, and the brain-burning here is all about the lateral connections to be made with the words.
There's a huge amount of words supplied with the game that will come up in a different combination every time; but the replay factor here is massive because it's a game where the players really bring the 'play' themselves.
3-8
Players
12+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Like the similarly brilliant Codenames, Decrypto is all about the clue-giving and lateral thinking. But whereas giving clues in Codenames you're looking to link different words together, with Decrypto the task is to find a separate clue for separate words: still a challenge, but one that is less likely to lead to five or ten minutes of head-scratching. You want to throw people off the scent and so it is a game where lateral thinking is rewarded - but of course, the lateral thinking on the teams might be going different ways, and making different connections... a lovely, lovely game.